The Right Time Takes Time

It would be three years before I could say her name without my throat tightening up. The first time that happened, my older son was next to me and of course, he noticed. He said: “Mom, I think it’s time.”

We had spent twelve years together, Roxy and I. Twelve years of mornings, days, and nights with very few interruptions. I think she was me in a dog body and I was her in human form. Never a miscommunication, never anything we did not understand. A flow, an ease, a fit. A blessing and a grace. She loved everyone and joy oozed from her.
That Tuesday afternoon when she told me with her chocolate eyes deep into mine that her body was done, I knew that I was about to use my one pass, the one that would free her and would break me.
It did both.
It was August, my younger son was in France and I asked the vet’s office to please keep her ashes until Christmas, until he could pick them up.
On a clear, cold, and windy December day, he and I drove to Roxy’s favorite beach, opened the wooden box, and threw handfuls of sacred dust into the bay. The wind swirled all around us, returned bits of her to me, and glued them to my tears.
This made me laugh as I cried and that’s when I swallowed some of her in a wild baptism of sorts that told me that she and I would forever be together.
In the following years, I traveled a lot and whenever I saw a big black dog, I would instantly weep. Her name always got caught in my throat and I wondered if this would ever change.
Until that one spring morning, when I said her name and my heart and eyes stayed quiet. This is when my son said: “Mom, I think it’s time.”
The next day he took me to the Humane Society and then to another shelter and then another. Visiting a friend in Oregon, I stopped at every potential place and saw lots of pups, but none of them were mine.
Then one Sunday morning in July, I woke up, and I needed to go to the place where we had found Roxy, a decade and a half before. I drove an hour, walked to the exact pod where my Furry Soul Sister had been waiting for me, and behind the glass, there was a whole litter of puppies. Short-haired, beautiful.
But not mine.
We know these things.
As I was about to turn away, a woman who worked at the shelter called out to me. She said: “Hey, there’s one more of them. She has long hair, though.” And just as she said that a little ball of dark fluff came bouncing in from the back and there she was: Mine.
The next day I returned with my daughter who confirmed that yes, she was the one. Now a grown woman, my daughter was barely surprised that there we were, sitting in the same room where we had met Roxy when she herself was a teenager. My daughter knows about magic.
Lila.
Lila and I.
Lila and I on so many adventures.
Lila and I on a new life together.
Never have I felt so protected than in our last few years together. A loyalty like no other. A different way of being a team, a different way for a different chapter.
And just as much love.
Here’s to allowing our hearts to love fully, even when we know this love will very possibly wound us deeply. Here’s to knowing when it’s time to feel the pain, the grief, the choking up, the dread of not knowing when or if it will stop. And here’s to the people in our lives who know us so well that they know when it’s time - before we do.
Finally, here’s to saying yes again, and accepting the Gifts, even (especially) when they are different Gifts, Gifts just right for us for today.